This works the other way around you know.

I knew some programmers who worked for a EU company that had a military contract.

When they traveled to US (talking around 2005 here), their entire harddisk was encrypted and they got a short education on how to handle certain suspicious situations.

US is known to use intelligence data any way they want, including economical gain. So if your laptop contains any confidential data of any big European company, it's already a good idea to not make that data available.

The whole Edward Snowden debate was only an issue because US was collecting data of their own citizens. Let's be honest, nobody cared who they were spying on abroad.

It's really sad to see how "friendly" nations treat each other like that.

So to answer your initial comment: The one who has the confidential information is not the spy. The spy is the one who wants to get access to it.

The US border sounds so much like the Chinese one! :(

The wiped laptop certainly doesn't look like that of a normal user without adding stuff.

> normal user

The normal user browses the web and almost nothing else.

It always amazes me what a "normal user" collects on their device when all they really do is use it as an internet machine.

... but this laptop hasn't even been browsing the web, and so it will have no history and no cache and no saved passwords for websites and wifi hotspots ...

That's actually a good point. Might be a good idea for a software there: something that generates fake browsing history for the different browsers.